The Last Days of Marvin Morales - The Sacramento Fool's Finale

On the morning of December 2, 2025, a mother at work checked the surveillance camera in her Elk Grove home and saw her eleven-year-old son lying motionless on the floor. Officers from the Elk Grove Police Department responded to the 7600 block of Ferrell Way and found Mar Aris Untalan Morales with multiple stab wounds. The boy was rushed to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. His father, Marvin Morales, was gone.

THE SUSPECT:

Marvin Morales was a Sacramento County Sheriff's Office deputy from 2017 until his forced resignation in February 2024. His career unraveled on October 24, 2023, when fellow deputies found him unresponsive on the floor of a restroom at the Central Division station. Body camera footage captured deputies administering Narcan to revive him from what turned out to be a fentanyl overdose. The internal investigation that followed revealed Morales had confiscated narcotics from citizens during field stops, then kept them for personal use. He admitted to taking a methamphetamine pipe home and smoking the residue three to four times over four months, claiming the drugs gave him the energy he needed to write reports. On the day he collapsed, he had seized fentanyl from a suspect and smoked it in the station bathroom while still in full uniform.

THE AFTERMATH:

Morales resigned in February 2024 ahead of his termination and was subsequently decertified by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office released over four hundred pages of internal investigation documents, photographs, and body camera video detailing his drug use, evidence tampering, and dishonesty. Sheriff Jim Cooper called it a horrible embarrassment for the department.

THE CRIME:

Less than two years after his firing, Morales was watching his two children at the family home in Elk Grove when he fatally stabbed his eleven-year-old son. A six-year-old girl was also in the home at the time but was not physically harmed. She was later evaluated at a hospital and released to her mother.

THE PURSUIT:

After the stabbing, Morales fled in his vehicle. Law enforcement agencies across Sacramento County were alerted and spotted him driving southbound on Interstate 5. A pursuit ensued at speeds exceeding one hundred miles per hour. Near the intersection of Interstate 5 and Highway 12, Morales stopped his vehicle and, according to deputies on scene, produced what appeared to be a rifle and pointed it toward officers. Multiple officers from the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office and other agencies fired, striking Morales. He was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. The California Department of Justice opened an investigation into the officer-involved shooting.

CURRENT STATUS:

The Elk Grove Police Department Investigations Bureau continues to lead the homicide investigation into the death of Mar Aris Untalan Morales.

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